Don't Let Me Remember
by Naisumi
Summary: A series of short vignettes concerning the Brotherhood's respective pasts. *gasp* Everyone, clap for me! No slash, for once! Hell hath froze over once more! (*is told that that makes no grammatical sense and goes to wallow in self-pity >.
1. Jade with a D~i Am

Title: Don't Let Me Remember-*-_Jade with a D_~i Am 

Author: Naisumi 

Rating: R 

Parts: 1/4 

Disclaimer: You've _got_ to be kidding...^.~ 

Archive: If you want, but could you tell me at least? 

Warnings: Angst, symbolism, darkness, yadda yadda yadda 

Notes: Wow. My first fic that isn't blatantly slashy or even subtly slashy. *teary-eyed* I'm so proud! *coughs* Anyway, **Don't Let Me Remember** is a series of short vignettes about the Brotherhood members' pasts--each part is one of them though their identity will not be revealed until the end. This is extremely dark and angsty (what have I written that isn't? well...Pietrance, but that one's on hold >.<). ^-^; You have been warned. 

Additional Notes: This is _not_ betad. 

Enjoy, and please give me C&C!!! Comments and critics welcome, flames will be posted and laughed at and then used for the litter box. 

"blah." People speak 

-- uh...scene switch 

-- 

The world spins on its axis, day after day, never spinning slower because of the clutching hands of black that were of space. He often wondered what would happen if the world spun backwards, wondered if the stars ever gossiped about how stupid humans were. 

God, he hated their world, their whole fuckin' society. He hated their distantly beautiful needlepoints that shot moonbeam ice and liquid insanity into craving veins, he hated their bottles of golden piss-yellow amber that stank of depravity, he hated their eyes, hollow and greedy, leaving nothing dressed, unscathed, unhurt. How he hated, _hated_ them. But he was part of their world, their lives--and he hated himself, as well. He hated how he went down on them for a packet of finely ground powdered diamonds, looking as temptingly sweet as sugar-laced love might be. He never took a shot, though, just sold them in tiny used vials because he had no paper. Sometimes they'd take the drugs without paying and beat him with steel crowbars in musky alleyways for good measure, and he'd go sell himself again, ignoring the welts and bruises and ignoring the blood in his mouth. 

He hated blood, too--hated the metallic tang it had on his tongue, the sheen of crimson dye on wrists, the dried, parched brown of it under his fingernails. He could feel it elsewhere as well, under his clothes, under his skin where he once fancied himself a walking corpse, eyes as empty as theirs, his flesh yearning for physical pain yet feeling none anymore. Life was terrible that way, dangling release, then snatching it away. He hated life as much--rather, almost as much--as he hated them. 

The other day he met a girl in an alley, three men roughing her up for some "lovin'" with an f. He forced them away and helped her up. They laughed that the three didn't even have the decency to pay up. 

He asked her if she was a prostitute. She looked him in the eye and told him that she was a princess. The two of them left it at that, and as the acid-gray rain began to drizzle from the flat, desolate sky, they sat and talked. 

She asked him what his name was and he replied that it was underused. She smiled at that with her too-red lips and returned that her name was the same with 'over.' The rain continued as he then asked her what season it was, and she answered that it was paprika and the rain was ruining the whole damn soup. They never left each other after that. 

A princess and a vagabond--sounded like a fairy tale, the stuff that little kids read about in golden-bound leather books with brightly colored stencils decorating the fine, parchment paper within. New York, inner city, L.A. version? A prostitute an a small-time drug dealer. He called himself her lackey; she called him her prince. She asked him how old he was. Fifty, he told her, and she said she was ninety-two. Looking into her cat green eyes, he knew that that was the truth. 

They rented an attic room above a tiny pizzeria and managed to get the rent on time with their combined income. The son of the owners gave them scraps of food in exchange for small doses of crack, so their budget didn't need to cover that expense. However, money was scarce, and soon he found himself taking on the role of what his princess did more and more often. When she found out, she found out, it was the first time he had ever seen her so hysterically angry. Afterwards, she smoked a 'cancer stick'--as she called them--and joked that she had had a royal tantrum. He smiled at that and let it drop, even though later, he wondered about why she blew her lid about him doing people to get money. 

They called her a blowfuck and flipped her skirt as she walked by. On the sidewalks, she winked and flirted back. At two a.m. above creaking floorboards and silent stoves, he held her as she cried, her electric blue mascara running down her rouged cheeks like navy tears. 

He asked her if she ever feared for her life. She asked him back if he did, too. His answer was that he wasn't normal, that he was something defined by ugly words he had heard at the electronics store on one of the wide screen televisions they'd never even dream of owning. 'Mutant,' he said and she smiled sardonically at him with her cherry lips, saying, 'We're all mutants, honey.' 

Later, upon further contemplation, he realized that her definition of 'mutant' was different from his. Hers was the twisted perverse wraiths stalking the streets, indistinguishable from shadowy demons, fashioned by gluttony and hate so that they were almost no longer human. His was that he was different; could do things--frightening things--could fight, even though he'd also be hated. When he told her that, she smiled and told him that everyone hated everyone else, except for princesses and their princes. He let her dream and listened intently, as if hoping to siphon off some of the hope that her hypnotic voice carried. 

Sometimes they'd go to the mall and pretend they had money. He'd clean himself off as best as he could and she'd wear knee-length plaited skirts, ankle socks, modest turtlenecks, no make up. They'd window shop and imagine living the glamour life where syringes were banned and government gouged out men's eyes if they looked where they weren't supposed to. He asked her if that would happen to him and she replied matter-of-factly that of course it wouldn't, that he was clean. Besides, he was her prince. She told him that they'd have pillow fights and eat hot fudge sundaes with chopped bananas and nuts, maraschino cherries, whipped cream and gooey marshmallow. It sounded so good and true and real coming from her that he almost believed it. 

Once she had confessed that she didn't think about the men she went down on. He asked her what she did think about, and she told him that she sang hymns in her head. 

'Lord Almighty--Lord Almighty,' she breathed, her voice slightly roughened from smoke, grime, tears, but he could hear the melody behind the words. When he told her that it sounded beautiful, she replied that of course it sounded pretty; all hymns were pretty. He asked her if she used to go to church. She smiled and told him that she was a virgin priestess. 

When she came home the other night, she was covered in semen and blood and everything else. She said she had had a rough day at work. She always called it work--called it one of those desk jobs that everyone hated but she had to do anyway. 'I had a lot of clients today,' she said, 'Too many at the same time. The phone lines ringed themselves off the hook.' Sitting down on their ripped old couch--the one with the stuffing falling out in chunks of weathered yellow--she whispered through her chattering teeth, 'but it brings home the money, y'know? Someday we're gonna leave d'city an'when we do, we're gonna need money to play the slots.' 

He listened to her lie and lied back, 'Of course. Of course, we're going to leave.' 

The next day, she didn't come home. The day after that, he called the police station and they hung up on him. The third day, he found a note hidden under the water-stained double mattress. 

'I'll never forget you. Someday, everyone will see you as the prince I saw...but for now, your princess has gone to save our kingdom--the one up there,' 

Todd numbingly read the shaking cursive, a stark finality in the trembling writing. 

At the bottom, he stared past the dust, only to see in a hasty scrawl, 'Get out of Hell--for me?' Then, closing his eyes, he turned over the slip of tattered paper and opened his eyes to read the only steady words on there with a teary smile, 

'I am an angel.' 


	2. Blue with an E~cE n'EsT pAs ImPoRtAnT

Title: Don't Let Me Remember-*-_Blue with an E_~cE n'EsT pAs ImPoRtAnT 

Author: Naisumi 

Rating: R(/NC-17?) 

Parts: 2/4 

Disclaimer: You've _got_ to be kidding...^.~ 

Archive: If you want, but could you tell me at least? 

Warnings: Angst, symbolism, darkness, yadda yadda yadda 

Notes: Dahhhh!!! This one is REALLY dark...When I reread it, I was like, "Hoooly crap!!" >.< Anyways, you are now warned. If you are squicked by molestation, do not read. 

Additional Notes: This is _not_ betad. 

Enjoy, and please give me C&C!!! Comments and critics welcome, flames will be posted and laughed at and then used for the litter box. 

"blah." People speak 

-- uh...scene switch 

-- 

The moon was dotted with craters, as if someone had taken the stars and thrown them viciously at it, watching the prismatic explosions with sadistic glee. It hung there, a maimed silvery gold pearl, suspended in the melted sapphire sky, a silent testimony to injustice, like a pained witness to all the crimes that occurred on earth. He watched it with wide glassy eyes. His arms ached. 

It had been the same today, the same as every other Thursday--every other any-day. It hurt. After dropping him off at the public school, his foster mother had screeched away in her bright green Jetta. He thought if it her--her and her never-ending envy for everyone else's things. He hated her--her and her straw-like hair, bleached from the sun and too many color treatments. His 'mom' hadn't done anything last night, but it still hurt; he could still remember the night before. She made him call her by her maiden name, and refused to hear the word 'mother' out of his mouth. 

He could remember the first time it had happened--it had been Tuesday, 12:58 AM; he had been staring at the clock. He had been 11. She came in and sat at the foot of his bed, looking ghostly in the silvery moonlight that flooded his navy blue coverlet. Smiling, she had asked with her honey sweet voice if he was having trouble sleeping. He had peered up at her, feeling strangely anxious, and had replied in the honest open way that children had, saying that he felt cold. Her smile widened and she had pulled the soft, cotton comforter around him snugly. Being tucked in had felt so nice, so loving, and he had almost begun to fall into a hazy slumber when he felt fingers slip under his shirt. The quiet, almost shallow breathing of the woman above him sped up, hissing past his ears as she bent over, both hands spanning his quivering torso, her thumbs hooking on the waistband of his underwear. A soft whimper escaped his throat before he was silenced by something wet running along his trembling lips, a warm tongue that slipped inside briefly before withdrawing. Peering into the night, he tried to discern the shadowy figure above him, and saw her astride him, her knees on either side of him, her naked chest heaving, her skirt hiked up. 

A few moments more of senselessness and then she was off him, rebuttoning her blouse. He opened his mouth to question it all, confused and scared and crying, but she simply smiled and murmured, 'Shh...it's not important.' 

It continued like that for weeks, his foster father never finding out. He didn't understand; didn't understand why she touched him like that, why she panted and gasped and moaned, why she put his hand to her breast. For a while, he thought it would only be her, but then his father went on a business trip. 

That night, it had been 9:24, several minutes after his usual bedtime. It was Sunday and it was cold, rainy, thundering. He had been scared, being the child he was, and called for her; called for 'mom,' even after everything confusing and frightening. He heard laughter from the master bedroom and found her with another man. He didn't understand then, just like he didn't understand before--didn't understand when she hugged him and began caressing him, didn't understand when she held him down for her boyfriend, didn't understand the searing white-hot pain that surged through him. The same thing happened again and again, his father still oblivious. 

Then, two months later, he found his father _had_ known. 

His father's caustic words chilled every crevice of his broken, fearful heart. 

'You want another kid?! I already gave you this one--isn't he good enough?' 

'Yeah, he's real tight, John...but I want--' 

'What, a threesome? You're a sick woman, Barbara!' 

'And you're just as sick! You're just as sick for giving me a kid to rape.' 

Rape. 

So now he had a world to call the terrible hurt and terrifying touches. 

Three days later, the door to his bedroom creaked open, her softly calling his name and he stripping down obediently. Later, while she was dressing, he killed her with one of her antique silverware collection--a sterling knife. He turned on the stove, set the microwave to preheat, turned the oven to 360 degrees and stabbed his father, as well, when he came to the kitchen, enraged. 

Then, he lit the house aflame, standing on the dew-bright lawn. And as the unholy structure, the gateway of Hell burned, Pietro whispered a quiet echo of previous words, "It's not important." 


	3. Black with an O~ i CaN't SeE

Title: Don't Let Me Remember-*-_Black with an O_~i CaN't SeE 

Author: Naisumi 

Rating: R 

Parts: 3/4 

Disclaimer: You've _got_ to be kidding...^.~ 

Archive: If you want, but could you tell me at least? 

Warnings: Angst, symbolism, darkness, yadda yadda yadda 

Notes: Well, this one is kinda short, but I really couldn't help it ^-^;; 

Additional Notes: This is _not_ betad. 

Enjoy, and please give me C&C!!! Comments and critics welcome, flames will be posted and laughed at and then used for the litter box. 

"blah." People speak 

-- uh...scene switch 

-- 

Staring. He hated staring. They plagued him like a thousand fireflies, blazing endlessly with underlying hostility, sparks lit with dancing, jeering flames--flames so like their questioning stares filled with lingering eeriness. Always, they filled his head with a mire of glistening crimson, with the echoing hoof beats from some savage within. It scared him sometimes; other times, he was too numb to feel much else or anything, let alone fright. Shadows and flickering haunting light colored his mind, distorted his thoughts, his senses, his former dreams, now nightmares. 

The dust settled about him and he gagged on his own tongue. Doubling over, he banged a fist against the closet door, hearing the furnace start up with a rumble. He tried to scream but felt more grime coat his lips as he opened them. Something scuttled past, feeling spiny yet feathery, and he recoiled, bracing his arms against the lime-coated walls and steel door. He hadn't eaten in a week and his stomach had stopped cramping two days ago. A wave of heat from the quaking furnace reminded him of pangs, though, eliciting a groan from deep within his heaving chest, struggling lungs attempting to draw in breath. The roiling warmth suffocated him; it was too much, filing his eyes with stinging sweat, raining from nowhere but inside. The unbearable darkness and vapor and invisible tide of heat, fear, nausea--all of it surged over him, choking him as if it were an ink-colored anaconda with scales of anxiety, fangs of brutal reality, surreality, fatality. 

Abruptly, the doorknob rattled, clicked, opened with a clang. He tumbled out from where he had been leaning heavily against the metal-plated door. His mother stared coldly down at him, saying after a moment, 'Come upstairs.' He wiped the dust and cobwebs and sweat, tears, filth from out of his eyes. 

It was always like that; always full of blazing pain and twanging chill, always belabored and beriddled with bullet holes from the keen prongs of hateful parents' words. He tried to hate them back but found that he couldn't. 

'Useless cretin!' 

'Maybe if he actually paid attention in school, he wouldn't be such a rotten bag of wind.' 

'Don't you give a damn about what your mother and I went through?!' 

'You miserable brat!' 

'Go to hell!' 

'Damn you--' 

'--I hate you, you--' 

'Idiot! You're such an absolute--' 

'Moron! Deadbeat!' 

'Scum!' 

'Son of a--' 

'Whore! That's what your idiot father calls me because of YOU! You retarded--' 

'--good-for-nothing--' 

'--piece of shit!' 

'I--hate--YOU!!!--' 

Something inside him broke. All the hate and bitterness and pain flooded over him like a sea of scarlet, drowning him in a haze of blood-tinted insanity. The next day, the police found him drenched in blood and sitting in the park, eyes blank. 

'What happened, son?' 

Fred turned to them and said honestly, "I don't know, but I think everyone's dead." 


	4. Amber with an U~PuT iT oUt WiTh FlAmE

Title: Don't Let Me Remember-*-_Amber with an U_~PuT iT oUt WiTh FlAmE 

Author: Naisumi 

Rating: R 

Parts: 3/4 

Disclaimer: You've _got_ to be kidding...^.~ 

Archive: If you want, but could you tell me at least? 

Warnings: Angst, symbolism, darkness, yadda yadda yadda 

Notes: Okay, we can probably all figure out who this is if we've all read the other three parts like good little readers. 

Pietro: Why are you talking in 1st person plural? 

Uh. No reason. *coughs* I felt bad for this one, too >.<

Additional Notes: This is _not_ betad. 

Enjoy, and please give me C&C!!! Comments and critics welcome, flames will be posted and laughed at and then used for the litter box. 

"blah." People speak 

-- uh...scene switch 

-- 

The streets were rivers acerbically acid blood-grime hissing down its cemented veins as it ate away at vestiges of light that clung to cobblestone and too-sticky tar. The buildings glowed orange, casting the passion red of setting sun at the huddled inhabitants of the downtown suburb. A few of the motionless figures shivered and moved sluggishly, shrinking into the shade as if their gaunt, vampiric frames threatened to telescope into themselves at even the faintest rays of sunlight. Gnarled fingers clutched at tattered scarves, elbows were bent tightly to hide the multiple dots that belied the specters of syringes. The world was hued with blackness and everything that came with that artificial night, heralded by dripping pipestems and overhauling ledges that had emblazoned footprints on them. It was all the same for them. 

Unlike the others, he relished the feel of the hazy burnt raspberry red of the sun's descent, relating it to a haloing hellish glow of a fallen satanic angel. The thought made him laugh. The guy beside him told him that laughing sounded strange coming from him and the girl trailing beside them both said that whatever amused him had to be pretty damn funny. He smiled hollowly and replied that he had been thinking about angels. The three of them found it hilarious. 

That night, they slept in the park under an awning of trees, under a crooked sign on the side of a shed that looked like it said 'halo.' In the morning, his friend asked if they were going to trick(1). He shrugged and said that had to check up on his mom first. The girl eyed him strangely. 

'I'm home,' He called, peeking out absently through the cracks in the boarded up windows. There was no answer, as was routine, and he moved over to the rusting faucet of the kitchen sink, splashing some of metallic-tasting water on his face. He talked for a while before walking over to the armchair where his mother was. Her face was turned towards the window. Sitting down, he spoke some more before getting up, dejected at the lack of response. 

His friend told him that they had tricked some and had gotten at least $45. She smiled at him and reached under her skirt to pull out a wad of bills. Smiling weakly, he took the money and counted the slightly moist dollars. $55. He told them they could get some breakfast and the other two grinned at that. Money was scarce, as was food. Sex was not. 

Later, in the night, as she lay in his arms, she told him with a hushed voice that she loved him so much. He smiled into her hair, ignoring the stench of crime around her, them, the whole place. It was the truth, she insisted, 'You make me feel special.' Shaking his head, he opened his mouth to speak, but she continued in a flood of sudden openness, saying that when she was with him, she didn't feel like a two-dollar whore who hiked up her skirt for anyone. He replied that he was glad and she smiled with her scarlet lips. 

Three weeks later, the boy called him, telling him that his sister hadn't come home last night. He asked where she had gone, and her brother wringed his hands, saying that she had gone to a party to trick some. He got the address and went to look for her. Returning to the siblings' two-room run-down lodging five hours of searching later, he found her sitting on the rickety porch, her bloody hands lighting a trembling cigarette. He demanded where she had been, but she didn't answer, just stared up at him and whispered brokenly, 'I did it for you.' 

Startled, he gaped at her, baffled. Rushing into the shack on a spur of desperate instinct, he saw uncomprehendingly a pool of crimson slowly spreading on the grimy tile floor. His friend was dead. 

Turning around, he saw the girl leaning on the doorjamb, quivering with the intake of nicotine. She smiled again, and tossed a match into the scattered newspapers that littered the floor. 

Then he was running, the dilapidated shed-like home behind him, flames licking up the brittle creaking frame. Bursting in the door of his own quarters, he yelled, 'Mom!' and lurched violently towards her in her chair, shaking her with clenched fingers. He screamed for her over and over, ignoring the glazed look over her unseeing eyes, the icy coldness of her skin that had crusted over her for almost three months now, the foul reeking odor of long-acquainted death and rotting flesh permeating the room. 

Backing away, hysterical, he ran again, trembling with emotional and physical exertion. A crackling above in the dry apartment and the obnoxious beeping of a smoke alarm alerted him of their neighbor's convenient accident, a blaze of red flame flashing across his view. Then, as everything combusted, he stood outside, staring at the window with the slowly blackening figure in it, and as the wailing scream of sirens whined in the distance, Lance walked away, burnt amber eyes wide with shock and lit with blazing flames--just like his life--_their_ lives. 

  
~fin~ 

(1) "To trick" is basically the slang term referring to when a prostitute goes looking for clients, or...well, you get the idea. 

A/N: Now, is 'their lives' referring to the siblings or some other people? ^.~ Food for thought. 

Oh yes, I will now explain my titling system to y'all. 

_Jade with a D_ = **Jaded**

_Blue with an E_ = **Bleu** (I translated this one for you guys) 

_Black with an O_ = **Block**

_Amber with an U_ = **Umber**

The first words Jade, Blue, Black, and Amber are the respective character's eye colors, and the words Jaded, Bleu, Block, and Umber have significant meanings. I just thought I might as well share that secret ^.~ Don't tell anyone who hasn't read this fic...spoiling the secret won't make it as fun XD 


End file.
